Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Years ago our legal system decided that the mentally ill should be free to determine their own treatment. To see the results, all you have to do is walk a Hollywood street (and beyond of course) to find mentally ill people enjoying the freedom of living on their own. We call them the homeless.

When you live around so many mentally ill people, you become a little numb to the site of a person sitting in their own filth or pushing a grocery cart of trash, their most prized possessions. I say you become numb but of course everybody reacts differently. I still notice the homeless but I'm not traumatized by it anymore. I wouldn't be able to function if I was. Now I am of course saddened but probably more curious about particular situations I see.

Anyway, I guess the reason I bring all that up, is to say today I saw something I've probably seen in movies dozens of times before, but never in real life. As I was leaving the library, I noticed an elderly woman dressed in a slip walking in the street about two blocks away. In this area there are a lot of odd characters to be seen but she immediately caught my attention.

While I cranked my car, somebody pulled up to her. When I looked back and was driving in that direction, a young man in his 20s perhaps, jumped out of his car and carefully guided the obviously lost and confused lady into his vehicle. I assume he was the grandson and I imagine that he'd been frantically looking for her for some time. Maybe others were out looking as well.

I just found the whole thing profoundly sad.

And the fact that I probably pass some confused and lost grandmother everyday, who was never found, or never searched for, just breaks my heart.